"The Man with the Twisted Lip", one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories
written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the sixth of the twelve
stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The story was first published in
the Strand Magazine in December 1891. Doyle ranked "The Man with the Twisted
Lip" sixteenth in a list of his nineteen favourite Sherlock Holmes stories.
Plot summary Dr Watson is called upon late at night
by a female friend of his wife. Her husband has been absent for several days
and, as he is an opium addict, she is sure he has been indulging in a lengthy
drug binge in a dangerous East End opium den. Frantic with worry, she seeks Dr.
Watson's help in fetching him home. Watson does this, but he also finds his
friend Sherlock Holmes in the den, disguised as an old man, trying to
extract information about a new case from the addicts in the den.
Mr. Neville St. Clair, a respectable and punctual country businessman,
disappears. Making the matter more mysterious is that Mrs. St. Clair is
sure that she saw her husband at a second-floor window of the opium den, in
Upper Swandam Lane, a rough part of town near the docks. He withdrew into the
window immediately, and Mrs. St. Clair is sure that there is something wrong.
She tries to enter the building, but her way is blocked by the opium den's owner,
a lascar. She fetches the police, but they cannot find Mr. St. Clair. The
room, in the window of which she saw her husband, is that of a dirty, disfigured
beggar known to the police as Hugh Boone. The police are about to put this
report down as a mistake of some kind when Mrs. St. Clair spots and identifies
a box of wooden bricks that her husband said he would buy for their son. A
further search turns up some of her husband's clothes. Later, his coat, with
the pockets full of several pounds' worth of pennies and halfpennies, is
found in the Thames, just below the building.
The beggar is arrested and locked up at the police station, and Holmes initially
is quite convinced that Mr. St. Clair has been the unfortunate victim of
murder. However, several days after Mr. St. Clair's disappearance, his wife
receives a letter in his own writing. The arrival of this letter forces Holmes
to reconsider his conclusions, leading him eventually to an extraordinary
solution. Taking a bath sponge to the police station in a Gladstone bag,
Holmes washes Boone's still-dirty face, causing his face to be revealed — the
face of Neville St. Clair. Upon Mr. St. Clair's immediate confession, this
solves the mystery, and creates a few problems.
It seems that Mr. St. Clair has been leading a double life, one of
respectability, and the other as a beggar. In his youth, he had been an
actor before becoming a newspaper reporter. In order to research an
article, he had disguised himself as a beggar for a short time, during which he
earned a very large amount of money. Later in his life, he returned to the
street to beg for several days in order to pay a large debt. Given a choice
between his newspaper salary and his high beggar earnings, he eventually
became a professional beggar. His takings were large enough that he was
able to establish himself as a country gentleman, marry well, and begin a
respectable family. His wife never knew what he did for a living, and Holmes
agrees to preserve Mr. St. Clair's secret as long as no more is heard of
Hugh Boone. Points of interest
The selling of opium or other drugs was in and of itself no crime in the London
of 1889. Although the opium den was an environment connected with crime and
underworld, it operated openly and legally.
A contention is that many Sherlockian mysteries have solutions based on
seemingly unlikely events. The ability of St. Clair to earn a good living
begging is considered by some to be such a plot point, but others disagree. For
example, in Toronto a woman known as the "shaky bag lady" did this very thing,
surpassing the efforts of common beggars by presenting herself as more pathetic
than legitimate beggars. Another such example is in the city of Mumbai, India,
where newspapers have reported stories about several beggars who are Rupee
millionaires. The London Daily Mail has reported on a Putney beggar reportedly
earning £300 per day, a sum roughly equivalent to the 99th percentile of UK
earnings, while the New York Post has described a Grand Central Terminal
panhandler "raking up" $200 an hour. In one in-universe point of interest,
Watson's wife Mary calls him by the name "James" despite his established first
name being "John". This has led fans to suggest that Watson's middle name, which
is only alluded to as "H.", could be "Hamish", a variant of the name James.
Doyle never addressed the possibility during his lifetime.
Adaptations A silent version of "The Man with the
Twisted Lip" was filmed in 1921, directed by Maurice Elvey.
In 1951, Rudolph Cartier produced an adaptation entitled The Man Who
Disappeared. This adaptation was a pilot for a proposed television series
starring John Longden as Holmes and Campbell Singer as Watson.
In 1964, the story was adapted into an episode of the BBC series Sherlock
Holmes starring Douglas Wilmer. The adaptation developed St Clair's
attributed ability at repartee by showing him quoting from the classics,
including Shakespeare. Granada Television also produced a
version in 1986, adapted by Alan Plater as part of their The Return of Sherlock
Holmes television series. The 21st episode of Season 2 of the CBS
television series Elementary shares its title with "The Man with the Twisted
Lip", though there is virtually no resemblance between the stories.
The 2014 Sherlock episode "His Last Vow" begins with Holmes being found in a
drugs den by Watson, reminiscent of the scene in the opium den from this story.
References External links
The full text of The Man with the Twisted Lip at Wikisource
Media related to The Man with the Twisted Lip at Wikimedia Commons